1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of workflow systems and in particular to a workflow system design tool that enables significant customer configurability while allowing for definition of feature rich, complex workflow processes.
2. Statement of the Problem
A wide variety of systems entail processes that process information through a sequence of steps. In general, many such systems may be modeled and controlled as a workflow system wherein each step receives input, processes that input in some manner and forwards generated output to one or more next steps in the process. A complete process of such steps may be referred to as a process or a job. Workflow systems often allow for modeling of a complex sequence of steps including conditional evaluation for alternative paths or options through the entire workflow process.
Such workflow systems are frequently applied to a wide variety of workflows to model processes associated with a particular application area. In particular, workflow systems are frequently utilized to model workflows of data processing systems where input data is received by a step in the process, manipulated in various manners, and resulting data is applied to a next step in the process. Workflow systems may also be applied to model numerous other systems in a variety other application areas including, for example, process control systems such as may be common in manufacturing environments.
Workflow systems are sometimes created as customized programs designed and coded by system analysts and programmers designing and coding customized computer programs for a particular workflow processing application. Such a customized computer program may very closely model the underlying process but the development and maintenance costs are prohibitive in most environments. Other workflow modeling systems provide tools for more typical users to create new process models—e.g., without the need for skilled staff to create custom computer programs. These process modeling design tools aid an end user in creating a model for a new process and in maintaining the generated process models thus reducing or eliminating the need for skilled computer programmers and systems analysts. A number of workflow systems are available as commercial products that allow some degree of customization by a sophisticated end user. For example, IBM provides a product referred to as Infoprint Workflow (“IPW”) for such workflow process modeling in the context of printing systems management. IPW is widely known to those of ordinary skill in the art and information regarding IPW is readily available at www.ibm.com.
Some present day commercial workflow modeling design tool products are simple to use and thus obviate the need for costly, trained computer programming professionals. But most such systems are so simplistic that they cannot model complex processes. Other commercially available workflow modeling design tools are so complex that they entail such design complexity that most users still require the services of a highly trained professional to perform required setup, configuration, and customization. Further, such systems are sufficiently complex that any maintenance to the workflow definitions may also require services of a costly, highly trained computer professional.
It is evident from the above discussion that a need exists for an improved workflow system that provides both a high degree of flexibility in modeling even complex workflow systems and also provides a simple, easy to use architecture that allows a less sophisticated end user to easily define and maintain workflow systems utilizing the workflow system design tools.